A lot of people have been asking me questions lately about this entire debt debate. This is only natural, because as it stands now, politics is difficult to follow if it is not one’s passion; the task becomes even more difficult when it comes to economic issues, as those of us who have not studied either economics or political science can quickly find the terminology too vast to navigate in addition to our daily responsibilities. I certainly understand this, and that is why I am compiling this quick guide to what exactly has gone on in the “debt ceiling” debate, and why you should be really, really concerned about what is going on in Washington.
First, what is the debt ceiling? Basically, it is the credit limit on the Treasury, which pays the bills that the federal government has racked up. Because the U.S. is a giant country economically and militarily, with substantial expenditures on defense and social programs, we have a lot of debt. Because the nature of budgets requires that they usually be determined well ahead of time, sometimes the government reaches a point where the federal “accounts receivable” is taking in is less than the money it needs for its “accounts payable” (bonds, foreign debt, Social Security and military checks, federal employee salaries, etc.). When that happens, the credit limit has to be raised, in order for the Treasury to borrow the needed money to honor those bonds, write those checks, and pay those bills. Raising the debt ceiling is purely a necessity to keep the government running sometimes. Should the government be shrunk? Probably, but that gets done in the budget debates, not when the timer runs out on raising the limit so we can keep paying our bills.
The Constitution, as designed by its authors, established a number of things. First, it laid out the powers and responsibilities of Congress. Primary among these powers was the so-called “power of the purse,” meaning that Congress was ultimately responsible for determining what the federal government could spend money on. Second, but arguably more important, the Constitution established a separation of powers. The entire purpose of this structure (Legislative vs. Executive vs. Judicial) was laid out by James Madison in the federalist papers: “ambition must be made to counter ambition.” The theory behind our government from the outset was that conflict is good because it checks tyranny and forces everyone to meet in the middle.
Enter the “Tea Party” (a loose term, to be sure, as it is not a party at all but an artificially constructed and corporately sponsored faux populist movement within the larger Republican Party). Here is a group that snuck into Congress in 2010 based solely on two factors: the Citizens United verdict by the Supreme Court (which enabled corporate donors in any state to spend unlimited amounts of money in any election based on the premises that corporations are people and that money counts as free speech- see my previous blog on the egregious errors of logic behind that landmark decision), and the vast dissatisfaction of the American people with President Obama’s apparent failure to improve the job situation in the United States in his first year and a half in office. Regardless of your or my sentiments about that election, voter apathy- coupled with increased backing for the candidates from the Republican Party, which without fail represents corporate interests over those of individuals- resulted in the balance of power shifting in the House to the Republicans.
Truth be told, the outcome might not have been helped anyway, as mid-term elections historically reward the opposition party to the sitting president, but no one knows for sure. What is more significant than which party took control of the House, however, is WHO WITHIN that party won the seats. Republicans were challenged even within their primaries by a renegade faction of radicals. These radicals shared a few commonalities: they were vehemently anti-immigration, anti-homosexual, anti-Muslim, anti-taxation, and never once spoke of compromise with the President. As a matter of fact, most of them ran on going to Washington to oppose, thwart, and overturn his agenda at every step. This polarizing message, placing Obama in the role of the “other,” was a galvanizing message to a specific portion of America that was dissatisfied that Obama could have even been elected to begin with (you can draw your own conclusions as to the underlying causes of such an attitude).
On a tide of dissatisfaction and apathy for politics, the Tea Party arrived in Congress. While their presence was initially a welcome climate for House Speaker John Boehner, what he and his party would quickly realize was that they had attempted to harness a negative energy they could not quite control. The House went from a body of legislation to a body of symbolic votes against the President’s agenda, followed by a series of literally insane bills that were either ignorant of political process and the Constitution or merely destined to fail in the Senate, such as banning federal funding for abortion (which was already a law), to eliminate the IRS and all income taxes in favor of a sales tax (which is inherently regressive and hurts the poor far more than the wealthy), to switch from fluorescent to incandescent bulbs in the Capitol, to switch from paper and cardboard to Styrofoam coffee cups, to overturn the health care legislation passed by the previous Congress, to amend the Constitution in multiple ways, to repeal gun-free school zones (thus allowing guns INTO school zones), to reclassify man-made greenhouse gases as “non-pollutants,” to cut federal education spending, to essentially repeal the Clean Water Act, to end birthright citizenship, and more.
This was hardly the “job-creating” agenda they had promised when running. In truth, it was an ideological assault, an all-out rejection of social principles agreed upon by decades, even generations, of previous Americans. It was a pure attack, not only on the President, but upon Civil Rights, the New Deal, and even the Constitution itself. President Obama, himself a target of the Tea Party, became the convenient symbol to rally the base, using fear and anger at him personally to justify their social agenda of rejection.
Of course, elections have consequences, and these were the people the Americans had elected. While their antics seemed childish, they were, by and large, quite harmless. Their radical agenda, even when it managed to leak out of the House, was halted in the Senate when such was necessary. It seems fairly obvious that the “grown-ups” in Washington understood they were dealing with legislators that had the collective attitude of a belligerent preteen, breaking rules and making trouble just to make noise and defy their elders. These Tea Party freshmen would either learn how to compromise or they would be voted out in two short years.
However, what no one counted on was that they would remain intransigent to the point of turning the House into their own personal crusade headquarters. John Boehner came to eventually realize that many of these Tea Party representatives lacked a fundamental appreciation for how republican (small “r,” meaning representative government by consensus) government worked. The underlying premise was, again, that despite disagreements, the fact that the government NEEDED to get things done would FORCE opposing sides to sit at the same table and achieve compromise, particularly on issues that were required to be addressed in order to ensure the stability and the future of the country.
What no one counted on was that many members of the Tea Party were either unaware of, or even did not care about, what was necessary to keep the government running. Some of these people came to Washington literally on a mission to destroy the political process. They had many motivations: disdain for the President, objections to taxation, disdain for the federal government in general, etc. As such, they were almost able to successfully shut the government down during the debate over authorizing the federal budget in early 2011, refusing to pass a budget without symbolic cuts they could return home to their constituents and tout. Recognizing the need for the government not to shut down, Boehner and Obama were both forced into positions to the right of where they would have otherwise settled politically, while they watched a minority faction of the Republican Party hold the entire country hostage to their ideology-driven demands.
Fearing that he might lose control of his own party, and therefore his job, John Boehner made a politically expedient but potentially historically catastrophic mistake: he decided to pick a fight ON BEHALF OF the Tea Party. The calculation was clear: if he sought to draw a line in the sand and appeal to their interests, he would stave off a challenge from House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, whose rhetoric and political intransigence was more compatible with those of the Tea Party than were Boehner’s. He laid out the demands in May 2011: there would be no increase in the debt ceiling approved by the House without an equal amount of cuts in federal spending.
Now, the majority of independent voters and middle America probably would not see anything inherently wrong with that maneuver. Those who feel the government is bloated beyond its needed size might be sympathetic to cutting spending. I can certainly get on board with appropriate spending cuts. However, by tying the debt ceiling to spending, Boehner and the Republicans created the conundrum in which we now find ourselves. The House, in order to pass a bill, would now require massive spending cuts in order to authorize a fairly routine increase in the debt limit. Further, Republicans and the media allowed Tea Party members like Michele Bachmann to speak ignorantly about the debt limit, allowing her and others to make erroneous statements, such as that raising the debt limit somehow raised spending (which it does not), and that perhaps defaulting on its debt would be a good thing for the U.S. (which it most CERTAINLY would not). This altered public perception about the nature and importance of the issue until we drew much closer to the zero hour on the default date.
What followed was a political nightmare. Democrats offered a compromise close to what was being asked, but one that included revoking some of the millionaire/billionaire tax cuts currently in place and closing tax loopholes. Since one of the Tea Party’s most extreme and core beliefs is that taxes should never be levied on ANYONE, EVER (except maybe immigrants), and since the Tea Party does not understand the nature of compromise, they stated they would immediately reject any plan that included any increase in federal revenue. They would only accept cuts. They held a vote on an increase in the debt ceiling with no spending cuts and defeated it soundly. Thus, spending was irrevocably tied to the debt ceiling vote.
Eric Cantor and John Boehner each walked out of talks with Vice President Joe Biden and the President, respectively, each time citing revenue increases as an unacceptable starting point. Their Democratic counterparts insisted that the spending demands were too steep, as the numbers being debated would have required cuts to essential programs like Social Security. Each side began waging a battle to frame the debate: Republicans pointing to the Senate and Obama as tax-raising, fiscally irresponsible tyrants, and Democrats pleading with the people to understand they were only asking for a reasonable middle ground between the absolute demands of the Tea Party and what was practically achievable and fair for America.
The debate shifted further and further to the right. Democratic proposals continuously featured increased cuts, allegedly even considering cuts to entitlement programs (the Democratic equivalent of giving in on taxes). All they asked was the repeal of tax cuts for billionaires. This was always the breaking point in negotiations.
The “Gang of Six” (a cabal of bipartisan legislators who met in secret to design a compromise) designed a plan that seemed to meet close enough to the middle to work. They had a plan. Instead of waiting for the plan to be brought to a vote, the House decided to once again pass an ideological bill and came forward with the “Cut, Cap, and Balance” bill. While Cut and Cap were reasonable (sort of), once again Republicans had brought forth the Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution, something that could never pass the Senate when forced down their throats as a condition for raising the debt ceiling. The measure was swiftly destroyed in the Senate. Again and again, the Senate sent messages back to the House about how impractical their solutions were, but within the body that generated the Paul Ryan “Roadmap to the Future,” the pleas from party leaders fell on deaf ears.
As the deadline drew nearer, more and more economists came out and stated that failure to raise the debt limit could be catastrophic for the nation, as it would mean the potential loss of America’s AAA bond rating. A downgrade would make the U.S. no longer one of the safest and most reliable places to lend money. The result could be increased interest rates on mortgages and other loans, and other rippling effects that could damage the economy over the long term and cost American households far more money than any non-existent tax increase that the Tea Party was dangling as a specter over the heads of middle-class Americans. Additionally, the passing of the deadline would cause the Treasury to have to make some difficult triage decisions about which bills to pay and which to ignore. Of the debts it would have to consider: foreign debt, military pay, federal worker pay (FBI, CIA, Homeland Security, Justice Department), federal social programs (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid), veteran benefits, and much more.
The Tea Party remained intractable. Boehner brought forth one more plan in the House, one that featured some of the previously agreed-upon compromises. However, he had to delay the vote on his own bill one day in the week before the deadline because he lacked enough support from his own party to pass it (thanks, yet again, to the Tea Party). He only garnered the minimum number of votes for House passage (218) by ONCE AGAIN adding the Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution. The bill had zero Democratic votes, and a number of Republicans did not vote for it either.
The American people looked to the Senate. Of course, the Constitutional provision of the House bill once again doomed the bill to failure in the Senate; it was thus quickly rejected, even by some Republicans in the Senate. Democratic leadership decided to take up their own measure in the Senate, to which the Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell responded by initiating a filibuster and outright stating that negotiations would not happen over their proposal. The Senate proposal, even in its nascent form, seemed doomed to failure, which was both tragic and ironic because it featured NO REVENUE INCREASES and was so far to the right of the initial starting point for the Democrats that it would have passed in any other Republican House in the past half century, but for this one.
To analyze the events detailed herein: the debt ceiling vote has always been a rather cursory measure, not often creating controversy. While unpalatable to fiscal conservatives (and understandably so from their perspective), they usually go along with the measure because they understand the greater importance lies with the country being able to pay its bills and not risk its global economic standing.
However, the Tea Party does not care about what happens outside the borders of the United States. As a result, Tea Party members of Congress took a stand on a national issue with global implications and dropped an anchor in the sand, refusing to allow passage and refusing to compromise. A minority within a single body of the government, because of its unwillingness to understand or acknowledge the broader purpose of government and the two-party system, has ground government to a halt. We saw something similar when Republicans in the Senate issued filibuster after filibuster in Obama’s first two years, but on issues of national importance even they were willing to negotiate.
This, on the other hand, is a nearly unprecedented failure of the American political system. It is sabotage of the highest order. And, unfortunately, it is succeeding because those who initiated the sabotage are seeking to prove a broader point than even the one they claim. It is not just that they want government to shrink: they wish to demonstrate that centralized government can achieve no useful purpose at all. If they are allowed to succeed, they do more than simply make President Obama look bad: they will continue to spread disillusionment with American government. Once this happens, they can continue their ideological assault on the institutions our Constitutional ancestors have built over the past two and a half centuries: a balance of federal and state power, a system of checks and balances that requires compromise, the integration of pluralism at the center, the struggles of labor, women, minorities, immigrants, and homosexuals for political and civil rights, the New Deal, a Great Society, and the notion that opportunity can be equal for all.
This is not the party of the people. They do not represent either a majority of the people or the interests of a majority of the people. Yet they are defeating representatives elected by various majorities throughout the country because they have embraced a single vision: say “no” to everything. They claim to represent fiscal responsibility, but ultimately they took a stand for only two things: the federal government is useless, and the rich in this country should bear a significantly smaller proportion of the tax burden than the middle class and the poor should. By tying the vote on the debt ceiling, an issue they clearly never understood and which they never took seriously, to the more general issue of federal spending (a fight they could pick any other time) they have brought the government to its knees.
This is a political war. These people have not declared war on the federal government, but on you and me and our entire political heritage. These are modern-day secessionists; they did not come to Washington to govern, but rather to demonstrate that any form of government than that which they desire must be destroyed or prevented from existing. They are wealthy enough to bear the short-term economic downturn that may come from their irresponsible governance, and they are willing to make the rest of us pay the price for their recklessness. They have seceded from the process of governing. A balanced budget amendment is infeasible while two wars are being fought, and such an amendment can never be proposed during times of conflict because expenditures will always outweigh revenues without tax increases. They assume that the situation is win-win for them, because if they get what they want, they will successfully dismantle much of our government, and if they are wrong, the economy will tank and they can blame the President in front of their constituents, who will continue to lap up the dogma these extremists peddle and return them to office in the next election.
Governments need not be brought down by force of arms. This is a protest at the heart of our nation: not a protest purely against the President or Democrats, but against the system of government in which they believe. When a faction within the government is so demonstrably insane as to be willing to push the country past the debt ceiling deadline regardless of the warnings of economists, the inmates have truly come to run the asylum. That they would continue to blame the other party for the problem they caused (tying debt to spending) and the failure of compromise (when they have offered none from the start), their position rings as hollow as the Grand Canyon.
Make no mistake, the federal government is not perfect. It is bloated and over-sized like a Super-sized Big Mac meal. However, we can have a reasonable debate about the size of government when we discuss the actual budget in those annual debates, NOT when someone uses it as a tool to stop the process of government completely and hold the country’s economic standing hostage as a display of political theater. The Republicans have lost control of the ember they nourished; now, the flame they once welcomed threatens to become an inferno that could reduce the Constitution and the credibility of the United States to a smoldering cinder.
Rather than be disillusioned by the actions of the Tea Party, Americans must get angry and get involved. Participate in elections: national, local, mid-term, and presidential. You must vote to prevent these extremists from asserting their will at the national level. This kind of extremism is eerily similar to that of the nascent Nazi rise in Germany after World War I. Their ideology is not far off: preserve the “purity” of the country by protecting its wealth, oppose the dilution of the people by undesirable elements, govern by their own religious interpretation of history, and solidify the harmony of government and corporate interests.
These people MUST be prevented from ever possessing deciding power at the national level again, at all costs. I pray that you, as the American voters, recognize how insane our political process must look to outsiders, and how dangerous it is that this kind of brinkmanship has become the norm since the Republican Party decided from Day One of the Obama presidency that they would oppose him on every issue at all costs, simply to defeat him.
We are a better country than this. At least, we should be. I hope that you and I, through activism and the next national election, can return a sense of sanity to our political process. Otherwise, the Tea Party will have won their independence from our nation, because they will have successfully divided us into two nations within one set of borders: a nation of wealthy Americans waging class warfare on a nation of rest of us, using the power of our own government. What the media has turned into theater and spectacle is a deadly serious issue. Stand up and fight, or watch these lunatics burn everything our forefathers struggled, bled, and died to build be burnt to the ground. The Tea Party must be stopped.
